CHAPTER VIII
THE HOUSE IN THE CLOSE
TO say that the Miss Robertsons were much respected in Kaims was to give a poor notion of the truth. The last survivors of a family which had lived—and, for the most part, died—in the house they still occupied, they had spent the whole of their existence in the town.
It was nearly a hundred years since a cousin of the Speid family, eldest and plainest of half a dozen sisters, had, on finding herself the sole unmarried member of the band, accepted the addresses and fortune of a wealthy East India merchant whose aspiring eye was turned in her direction.
The family outcry was loud at his presumption, for his birth was as undistinguished as his person, and the married sisters raised a chorus of derision from the calm heights of their own superiority. Mr. Robertson’s figure, which was homely; his character, which was ineffective; his manners, which were rather absurd, all came in for their share of ridicule. The only thing at which they did not make a mock was his money.
But Isabella was a woman of resolute nature, and, having once put her hand to the plough, she would not look back. She not only married Mr. Robertson in the face of her family, but had the good sense to demean herself as though she were conquering the earth; then she settled down into a sober but high-handed matrimony, and proceeded to rule the merchant and all belonging to him with a rod of iron. The only mistake she made was that of having thirteen children.
And now the tall tombstone, which rose, with its draped urn, from a forest of memorials in the churchyard of Kaims, held records of the eleven who lay under it beside their parents. The women had never left their own place; two or three of the men had gone far afield, but each one of the number had died unmarried, and each had been buried at home. The two living would look in at it, on the rare occasions on which they passed, with a certain sense of repose.
After his marriage, Mr. Robertson had met with reverses, and the increase of his family did not mend his purse. At his death, which took place before that of his wife, he was no more than comfortably off; and the ample means possessed by Miss Hersey and Miss Caroline were mainly due to their own economical habits, and the accumulated legacies of their brothers and sisters.
In the town of Kaims the houses of the bettermost classes were completely hidden from the eye, for they stood behind those fronting on the street, and were approached by ‘closes,’ or narrow covered ways, running back between the buildings. The dark doorways opening upon the pavement gave no suggestion of the respectable haunts to which they led. The Robertson house stood at the end of one of these. Having dived into the passage, one emerged again on a paved path, flanked by deep borders of sooty turf, under the windows of the tall, dead-looking tenements frowning squalidly down on either side, and giving a strange feeling of the presence of unseen eyes, though no sign of humanity was visible behind the panes. From the upper stories the drying underwear of the poorer inhabitants waved, particoloured, from long poles. The house was detached. It was comfortable and spacious, with a wide staircase painted in imitation of marble, and red baize inner doors; very silent, very light, looking on its further side into a garden.
It was Sunday; the two old ladies, who were strict Episcopalians, had returned from church, and were sitting dressed in the clothes held sacred to the day, in their drawing-room. June was well forward and the window was open beside Miss Hersey, as she sat, handkerchief in hand, on the red chintz sofa. The strong scent of lilies of the valley came up from outside, and pervaded that part of the room. At her elbow stood a little round table of black lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl pagodas. Miss Caroline moved about rather aimlessly among the furniture, patting a table-cover here and shifting a chair there, but making no appreciable difference in anything she touched. Near the other window was set out a tray covered with a napkin, holding some wineglasses, a decanter, and two plates of sponge-cakes.
The Miss Robertsons’ garden formed a kind of oasis in the mass of mean and crowded houses which lay between the High Street and the docks; for the populous part of Kaims, where the sailors, dockmen, and fishing-people lived, stretched on every side. A wide grass-plot, which centred in a wooden seat, crept close under the drawing-room windows, and from this a few steps ran down to the walled enclosure in which flower and kitchen garden were combined. The gate at their foot was overhung by an old jessamine plant which hid the stone lintel in a shower of white stars. Round the walls were beds of simple flowering plants, made with no pretence of art or arrangement, and dug by some long-forgotten gardener who had died unsuspicious of the oppressive niceties which would, in later times, be brought into his trade. Mignonette loaded the air with its keen sweetness, pansies lifted their falsely-innocent faces, sweet-williams were as thick as a velvet-pile carpet in shades of red and white, the phlox swayed stiffly to the breeze, and convolvulus minor, most old-fashioned of flowers, seemed to have sprung off all the Dresden bowls and plates on which it had ever been painted, and assembled itself in a corner alongside the lilies of the valley. The whole of the middle part of the place was filled with apple-trees, and the earth at their feet was planted with polyanthus and hen-and-chicken daisies. At the foot of the garden a fringe of white and purple lilacs stood by the gravel path, and beyond these, outside the walls, a timber-merchant’s yard made the air noisy with the whirring of saws working ceaselessly all the week.
But to-day everything was quiet, and the Miss Robertsons sat in their drawing-room expecting their company.
The Edinburgh coach reached Kaims late on Saturday nights, and those who expected mails or parcels were obliged to wait for them until Sunday morning, when, from half-past one to two o’clock, the mail-office was opened, and its contents handed out to the owners. Church and kirk were alike over at the time of distribution, and the only inconvenience to people who had come in from the country was the long wait they had to endure after their respective services had ended, till the moment at which the office doors were unlocked. From time immemorial the Miss Robertsons had opened their house to their friends between church hour and mail hour, and this weekly reception was attended by such county neighbours as lived within reasonable distance of the town, and did not attend the country kirks. Their carriages and servants would be sent to wait until the office should open, while they themselves would go to spend the interval with the old ladies.
Like moss on an ancient wall, a certain etiquette had grown over these occasions, from which no one who visited at the house in the close would have had the courage or the ill-manners to depart. Miss Hersey, who had virtually assumed the position of elder sister, would sit directly in the centre of the sofa, and, to the vacant places on either side of her, the two ladies whose rank or whose intimacy with herself entitled them to the privilege, would be conducted. She was thinking to-day of the time when Clementina Speid had sat for the first time at her right hand and looked down upon the lilies of the valley. Their scent was coming up now.
The drawing-room was full on a fine Sunday, and Miss Caroline, who generally retired to a little chair at the wall, would smile contentedly on her guests, throwing, from time to time, some mild echo of her sister’s words into the talk around her. When all who could reasonably be expected had arrived, Miss Hersey would turn to the husband of the lady occupying the place of honour, and, in the silence which the well-known action invariably created, would desire him to play the host.
‘Mr. Speid, will you pour out the wine?’
Sunday upon Sunday the words had been unaltered; then, for thirty years, a different name. But now it was the same again, and Gilbert, like his predecessor, would, having performed his office, place Miss Hersey’s wineglass on the table with the mother-of-pearl pagodas.
It was nearing one o’clock before the marble-painted entrance-hall echoed to the knocker, but, as one raindrop brings many, its first summons was the beginning of a succession of others, and the drawing-room held a good many people when Gilbert arrived. Two somewhat aggressive-looking matrons were enthroned upon the sofa, a group of men had collected in the middle of the room, and a couple or so of young people were chattering by themselves. Miss Caroline on her chair listened to the halting remarks of a boy just verging on manhood, who seemed much embarrassed by his position, and who cast covert and hopeless glances towards his own kind near the window.
Robert Fullarton was standing silent by the mantelpiece looking out over the garden as Miss Hersey had done, and thinking of the same things; but whereas, with her, the remembrance was occasional, with him it was constant. He had hardly missed his Sunday visit once since the Sunday of which he thought, except when he was absent from home. It was a kind of painful comfort to him to see the objects which had surrounded her and which had never changed since that day. He came back into the present at the sound of Miss Hersey’s voice.
‘You have not brought your nephew with you,’ she said, motioning him to a chair near her.
‘Ah, he is well occupied, ma’am,’ replied Robert, sitting down, ‘or, at least, he thinks he is. He has gone to Morphie kirk.’
‘One may be well occupied there also,’ said Miss Hersey, from the liberality of her Episcopalian point of view. ‘I did not know that he was a Presbyterian.’
‘Neither is he,’ said Fullarton, raising his eyebrows oddly, ‘but he has lately professed to admire that form of worship.’
Miss Robertson felt that there was the suspicion of something hidden in his words, and was a little uncomfortable. She did not like the idea of anything below the surface. The two women beside her, who were more accustomed to such allusions, smiled.
‘I do not understand, sir,’ said the old lady. ‘You seem to have some other meaning.’
‘I fancy there is another meaning to his zeal, and that it is called Cecilia Raeburn,’ said Fullarton.
‘Oh, indeed!’ exclaimed one of the ladies, putting on an arch face, ‘that is an excellent reason for going to church.’
Robert saw that Miss Hersey was annoyed by her tone.
‘I dare say he profits by what he hears as much as another,’ he said. ‘One can hardly be surprised that a young fellow should like to walk some of the way home in such attractive company. There is no harm in that, is there, Miss Robertson?’
‘No, no,’ said Miss Hersey, reassured.
‘Mr. Crauford Fordyce has a fine property in Lanarkshire, I am told,’ said one of the ladies, who seldom took the trouble to conceal her train of thought.
‘His father has,’ replied Fullarton.
Gilbert had entered quietly, and, in the babble of voices, Miss Hersey had not heard him announced. Having paid his respects to her sister, he did not disturb her, seeing she was occupied; but, for the last few minutes, he had been standing behind Fullarton in the angle of a tall screen. His face was dark.
‘Ah, Gilbert,’ exclaimed the old lady; ‘I was wondering where you could be.’
‘Take my chair, Speid,’ said Fullarton. ‘I am sure Miss Robertson is longing to talk to you.’
‘You are like a breath of youth,’ said Miss Hersey, as he sat down. ‘Tell me, what have you been doing since I saw you?’
Gilbert made a great effort to collect himself. The lady who had been speaking possessed an insatiable curiosity, and was bombarding Fullarton with a volley of questions about his nephew and the extent of his nephew’s intimacy at Morphie, for she was a person who considered herself privileged.
‘For one thing, I have bought a new cabriolet,’ said the young man.
‘And what is it like?’ asked Miss Hersey.
Carriages and horses were things that had never entered the range of her interest, but, to her, any belonging of Gilbert’s was important.
‘It is a high one, very well hung, and painted yellow. I drive my iron-gray mare in it.’
‘That will have a fine appearance, Gilbert.’
‘It would please me very much to take you out, ma’am,’ said he, ‘but the step is so high that I am afraid you would find it inconvenient.’
‘I am too old, my dear,’ said Miss Hersey, looking delighted; ‘but some day I will come to the head of the close and see you drive away.’
Gilbert’s ears were straining towards Fullarton and his companion, who, regardless of the reticence of his answers, was cross-examining him minutely.
‘I suppose that Lady Eliza would be well satisfied,’ she was saying, ‘and I am sure she should, too. Of course, it would be a grand chance for Miss Raeburn if Mr. Fordyce were to think seriously of her; she has no fortune. I happen to know that. For my part, I never can admire those pale girls.’
The speaker, who had the kind of face that makes one think of domestic economy, looked haughtily from under her plumed Leghorn bonnet.
Fullarton grew rather uncomfortable, for he suspected the state of Gilbert’s mind, and the lady, whom social importance rather than friendship with Miss Robertson had placed on the red chintz sofa, was a person whose tongue knew no bridle. He rose to escape. Gilbert rose also, in response to a nameless impulse, and a newcomer appropriating his chair, he went and stood at the window.
Though close to the lady who had spoken, he turned from her, unable to look in her direction, and feeling out of joint with the world. His brows were drawn together and the scar on his cheek, now a white seam, showed strong as he faced the light. It was more than three months’ since Cecilia had doctored it, and he had watched her fingers in the looking-glass. He had met her many times after that night, for Lady Eliza had felt it behoved her to show him some attention, and had, at last, almost begun to like him. Had her feelings been unbiassed by the past, there is little doubt that she would have become heartily fond of him, for, like Granny Stirk, she loved youth; and her stormy explanation with Fullarton constantly in the back of her mind, she strove with herself to accept the young man’s presence naturally.
To Fullarton, Gilbert was scarcely sympathetic, even laying aside the initial fact that he was the living cause of the loss whose bitterness he would carry to the grave. A cynicism which had grown with the years was almost as high as his heart, like the rising shroud supposed to have been seen by witches round the bodies of doomed persons. In spite of his wideness of outlook in most matters, there was a certain insularity in him, which made him resent, as a consequence of foreign up-bringing, the very sensitive poise of Gilbert’s temperament. And, in the young man’s face, there was little likeness to his mother to rouse any feeling in Robert’s breast.
Speid’s thoughts were full of Cecilia and Crauford Fordyce. He had seen the latter a couple of times—for it was some weeks since he had arrived to visit his uncle—and he had not cared for him. Once he had overtaken him on the road, and they had walked a few miles together. He had struck him as stupid, and possibly, coarse-fibred. He only realized, as he stood twirling the tassel of the blind, how important his occasional meetings with Cecilia had become to him, how much she was in his thoughts, how her words, her ways, her movements, her voice, were interwoven with every fancy he had. He had been a dullard, he told himself, stupid and coarse-fibred as Fordyce. He had been obliged to wait until jealousy, like a flash of lightning, should show him that which lay round his feet. Fool, idiot, and thrice idiot that he was to have been near to such a transcendent creature, and yet ignorant of the truth! Though her charm had thrilled him through and through, it was only here and now that the chance words of a vulgar woman had revealed that she was indispensable to him.
Though self-conscious, he was not conceited, and he sighed as he reflected that he could give her nothing which Fordyce could not also offer. From the little he had heard, he fancied him to be a richer man than himself. Cecilia did not strike him as a person who, if her heart were engaged, would take count of the difference. But what chance had he more than another of engaging her heart? Fordyce was not handsome, certainly, but then, neither was he ill-looking. Gilbert glanced across at a mirror which hung in the alcove of the window, and saw in it a rather sinister young man with a scarred face. He was not attractive, either, he thought. Well, he had learned something.
‘Mr. Speid, will you pour out the wine?’
Miss Hersey’s voice was all ceremony. Not for the world would she have called him Gilbert at such a moment.
He went forward to the little tray and did as she bid him.